Dispute continues

Press, 16 April 1982, Page 3

Dispute continues

Union pickets were again placed on the coastal container ship Union Nelson at Lyttelton yesterday morning, an hour after unloading work was supposed to have-started on the vessel.

Two members of the Lyttelton Harbour Board Employees' Union (above) take their turn on picket-duty. The $8 million Union Nelson, making her maiden call at Lyttelton, has been lying idle in port for 10 days. Trouble began for the ship when her stevedores. Union Maritime Services, decided to use their own equipment to unload the vessel. Watersiders were to drive the equipment. This rankled with the Harbour Board Employees’ Union, because its members usually work Lyttelton Har ; bour Board equipment to unload vessels at the port’s conventional wharves.

.They picketed the ship until Wednesday, when the Waterfront Industry Tribunal sat in Christchurch to try to settle the dispute. In the meantime the parties involved had reached a temporary agreement which would have allowed the ship to be unloaded yesterday,

before the tribunal's decision was announced.

This temporary agreement meant that Waterside Union members would have unloaded the ship, while the Lyttelton Harbour Board left a piece of machinery, known as an “equator” near the ship.

Watersiders yesterday objected to the “equator” being near the ship and wanted it removed. The Harbour Board ordered it removed after the watersiders threatened to stop all work at the roll-on terminal if it was left there.

Consequently the Harbour Board Employees' Union replaced its picket at the ship at 11 a.m. yesterday, an hour after the “equator" had been removed.

Mr P. K. Monk, secretary of the Harbour Board Employees’ Union, said yesterday that the dispute was the result of “muscle flexing” between the Lyttelton Harbour Board and the Union Company. It was not a dispute between the unions but one of whether the board or the company supplied the equipment to unload the vessel.

Union members were prepared to abide by the

tribunal's decision over which equipment was used, and thus which union members would work it.

If the Union Company was allowed to use its own equipment and decide where its ships would berth at port, that would mean that the company was running the harbour, he said.

“You can have only one authority in the harbour, the Lyttelton Harbour Board.”

Harbour Board employees had been prepared to compromise to allow work to start pn the ship yesterday.

Mr Monk said the Union Company could afford to confront the Harbour Board because much of the cargo at port came from Union Company ships. The Union Nelson is a 4950-tonne vessel on the “Sealink” container service between Onehunga, New Plymouth, Nelson, and Lyttelton.

She has on board 40 containers of sugar from Auckland while 30 empty containers are lying on the wharf waiting to be loaded. The Union Company management yesterday declined to comment on the dispute.